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Streaming “actual play” RPGs

The release of the fifth edition of D&D has caused a renaissance in RPGs. People who stopped playing decades ago are returning to the hobby, and more and more new players are discovering the fun in playing RPGs. And there’s a trend for more inclusivity in the hobby too: the D&D5 artwork is more diverse, and more and more publishers are coming forward with anti-harrassment policies. That increases the audience for RPGs even more, which is very good!
And, in a case of “the rising tide raises all the ships”, once you find out RPGs are fun and that D&D is not the only game, you start looking at other things too, which means other RPGs are doing better too.

One of the most interesting niches are “actual play” streams or videos. A group of people come together to play RPGs (often a whole campaign) and they stream that to Twitch and/or put up the recordings on YouTube. Some people manage to make their living by being an on-line GM, aided by technology such as Roll20 (which we use extensively too for our online games).
Some of these streams are hugely popular and have thousands of viewers. Even our own games that we streamed and then put up on YouTube were doing pretty well in views. And if you’re an RPG publisher, then you can see some real effects when your game is featured on one of these shows.

I think that’s a really cool development: you can see the game being played, so you can find out what the game is about.